‘Liz Line is a £19bn instrument of torture that’s the UK’s biggest game of chance’
Daily Star’s Dep Ed Andy Gilpin’s now almost daily battle with Elizabeth Line has seen him finally snap with an entire network that steadfastly refuses to get him to work
Andy Gilpin vs the Liz Line has kicked up a notch(Image: PA)
You know when you mention a product out loud and magically that very afternoon said item begins appearing on Facebook? Well, the £19 billion Elizabeth Line (Liz Line for the purposes of this tirade) has cutting-edge tech that goes one step further.
If at any time you so much as think ‘I’ll get the 7.25am from Acton Main Line to Canary Wharf tomorrow,’ an array of IT, AI, years of TfL planning and sorcery swings into action to make 100% sure that train will never arrive.
And probably not the one after. And the one after that will go to Paddington. But not the actual Paddington platform all the other Liz Line trains go from – a ‘high line’ one unergonomically chosen to be furthest away from the platform you actually need, so the entire packed train has to filter through three barriers before sprinting to the other side of the station to pick up the actual Liz Line again. Anyway, I digress.
Last night I thought ‘I’ll take the Liz Line to work,’ and today’s magic reason why they were all cancelled was ‘congestion.’
The delightful sight that greets a commuter each morning
Other excuses I’ve enjoyed over the past few weeks include: trespassers (see below), track defects (they love that one), signal failures, late-running improvement works (NOTE: Nothing ever improves), solar flares, Bigfoot, North Korea, a minor tear in the space-time continuum and the emergence of the Loch Ness Monster…. in Hanwell.
Trespassers? The Liz Line loves them. It welcomes them with open arms and even more open fences. In fact, sometimes I think there’s an Alton Towers-style queuing system to get onto the tracks, complete with a big LED countdown displaying: 14 minutes 26 seconds to trespass , while you compare stories of invading the track near Langley with your fellow encroachers. (Fast Passes are available via TfL).
The problem is, when it works, it’s a dream(Image: Hugo Philpott/UPI/REX/Shutterstock)
While trespassing seems to be the official regional pastime, if you prefer a 10-minute subterranean hike up three escalators and a half-mile walk just to reach daylight, Liz Line stations are also the place to be. Then there are the glass platform edge doors, which routinely open half a second after the train doors, leaving everyone standing there staring at their own reflections like confused zoo animals wondering if they’re trapped
The real problem is that when it does work, it’s a dream. Large, air-conditioned carriages with plenty of seating. You can actually hear the driver, and it zips along at a rapid pace – until you get west out of Paddington and it all grinds to a halt. There’s also entertainment and I do like the nice little kink in the track between Whitechapel and Canary Wharf that reliably catches anyone unawares and hurls them across the carriage.
Ma’am gave her name to this line(Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s just that the track itself is 78 miles of KitKats, spun sugar, and hope laid out from Abbey Wood to Reading. It’s fine if you don’t really need to be anywhere but it never, ever works if you need to do anything unreasonable like commute, get to Heathrow, or God forbid, go to Maidenhead for whatever reason.
Oh, and the central underground section (TfL) and the outer surface tracks (Network Rail) despise each other. Whenever a signal fails near Slough or Acton, TfL blames Network Rail, Network Rail blames the weather, and passengers are left stranded in a high-tech vacuum.
Andy Gilpin after three sets of escalators at Bond Street (probably)
On top of all that, imagine living near the Liz Line’s idiot brother: Acton Main Line Station. Sometimes trains stop there, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes trains that should stop here inexplicably don’t. Sometimes the lifts work, often they don’t. Sometimes people just push through the barriers. Sometimes there’s a security guard standing right there… and people still push through the barriers. It’s a triumph on every level (there are two of them, and there is often ‘reduced lift access’).
In fact, Acton Main Line is less a functioning station and more a social experiment in human patience. It’s the only place in London where you can watch three empty trains rumble past without stopping, followed by a train so full the passengers’ faces are pressed against the glass like a clown car at the circus.
Acton Main Line is an experiment in human survival(Image: Facundo Arrizabalaga)
To top it off, with trains stopping every 15 minutes and two (count them) buses passing every 16 minutes, every time you hit the platform there’s a steady 10-minute wait for a bus. It really is a masterclass in anti-logistics.
Oh, have I mentioned that Acton Main Line is a key stop on the Heathrow route? So every morning the train is packed with travellers carrying three or four suitcases blocking four seats apiece, looking at you with apologetic rage if you ask to sit down.
That’s if you even get on the train a rare, almost hallucinatory moment these days. But hey, that’s what £19 billion (£5 billion over budget) and 14 years gets you.
Her Majesty would be spinning in her grave – though knowing the Liz Line, the rotational mechanism would be cancelled due to track defects near Slough.
